'Did I Hear You Say...'
And Other Sad Tales
From Half-Wall Cubes

Career strategist JB Shelton has seen her share of people who thought their half-wall cubicles somehow separated them from their neighbors.

There was the man last year who cooked lunch on a George Foreman grill, apparently believing the burger aroma could be localized. And the top executive at a nonprofit who insisted on using the speakerphone function when he made conference calls from his cubicle.

But even worse was the awkward moment when Ms. Shelton introduced herself several times to a senior staffer sitting in a cubicle, and the woman failed to acknowledge her. Finally, Ms. Shelton knocked on the side of the cubicle, and the woman turned around. "Just open the door and come in," she told Ms. Shelton, who says she grabbed an imaginary doorknob, wrestled open the imaginary door and entered. Then, looking for some clue that the woman was joking, Ms. Shelton went so far as to say, "Excuse me, I have to close your door," but there was still no hint that the woman knew her door didn't exist.

Still, Ms. Shelton sympathizes. She figures the staffer's only defense against her lack of privacy is pretense. And she says she can't understand how office designers can talk about "semiprivate" cubes. That's "like being a little bit pregnant," she says. "There is no privacy in a cubicle."

The low partitions that masquerade as walls were developed decades ago to provide some semblance of privacy in open-plan offices. But they leave employees defenseless against the border crossings of neighbors. While people the world over may be born with the right to privacy, cubicle walls are further proof that once inside an office building, privacy isn't a right; it's for the privileged.

Office managers have long justified their use by pointing to the collaborative benefits of barrier-free offices. But bosses "confuse open communication with open physical environments," says Sue Weidemann, director of research for Bosti Associates, a workplace analysis firm. In fact, she says, "enclosed offices are much better than any version of open offices in terms of how well communication is supported."

According to a 2001 Bosti study, only 58% of people without any kind of partition said communication was well supported. Even fewer, 56%, believed that their half walls encouraged communication. But 98%, or nearly all, of those with private offices said communication was well supported. Similar numbers turned up for "impromptu meetings" and "dropping in to chat." The study concluded that "open offices inhibit communication."

In fact, Amanda Jacobson, who works for a financial-information company, argues that "the partitions don't do very much but hold in everyone's stuff" -- and "they don't do that very well." She had a cube mate whose stuff was always threatening to ooze into her territory. "I did my best to push it back every night after he left," she says.

Mimi Comfort, a finance manager for a retail company, says she has to flee her cubicle when she needs to make phone calls. But she does have deluxe 6-foot-high panels with little windows that afford her a panoramic view of other cubes. As a result, she says, she has not only "the illusion of privacy but the illusion of status." She doesn't confuse that with real status, though. Her cube, like others before it, serves the purpose of making "senior management feel good," she says. "They think they're doing something for their people."

At least Bill Lee, who founded an institutional brokerage firm in Atlanta, admits that he would hate to be forced from his office into the open plains of cubicles he chose for his employees. "That's what's good for them and not necessarily for me," he says, adding, "I know it's hypocritical but at least I'm owning up to it."

At the cube-packed call center where manager Nick Pujic works, the short partition walls have probably helped keep some inappropriate activities in check. But they didn't stop people from building four-foot replicas of the Eiffel Tower during their down time or bringing in plants that produced allergic reactions in neighbors. Employees were constantly begging to be moved from the loud/smelly person just over the border. Finally, last year, the company decided to change employee seating on a daily basis. Now, with less expectation of privacy, there are far fewer problems, Mr. Pujic says.

James Ludwig, the affable design director at
Steelcase,
one of the nation's biggest cubicle perpetrators, says partitions have evolved since their creation more than 30 years ago. They now perform functions sometimes unrelated to privacy, such as routing power and data cables and providing a place to hang a shelf. He concedes that certain cube walls above a certain height can mislead their inhabitants about their solitude: "Conversations become louder," he says.

The good news is that his company is investigating better methods of damping sound, and the company's customers are supplementing open plans with private rooms for occasional use. Still, Mr. Ludwig believes open plans still provide degrees of privacy. "Privacy isn't binary like pregnancy," he says. "Every inch you add [to a panel] above eye height" affords more privacy.

Of course, in that case, it stands to reason that the shorter your neighbor, the greater your privacy. So please, squirt, come here and sit by me.